


a heart will always remember

by zjofierose



Series: Sheith Angst Week 2018 [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Keith would rather just know the truth, M/M, Secrets, Shiro is too noble for his own good, background Allura/Lance, or angst with a resolution at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 06:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15902556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: "the mind wants to forget, but a heart will always remember."Keith forgets everything. Even Shiro.





	a heart will always remember

**Author's Note:**

> the seventh and last fic for Sheith Angst Week 2018, and, well, I think it kinda shows. BUT OH WELL I WROTE SEVEN FICS IN NINE DAYS I DON'T CARE IF THIS ONE KIND OF SUCKS.
> 
> for the prompt "amnesia". unbeta'd and barely proofread, just like the others.

It’s a relatively unremarkable crash, they tell him, all things considered - they’ve had worse, all of them. But for some reason, Keith’s harness wasn’t fully latched and that, combined with the fact that he’d had his helmet off because its comms were malfunctioning, means that by the time they find him he’s been bleeding into his brain for several hours.

“...and so we brought you right back and put you in a healing pod, but…” the beautiful woman’s voice trails off sadly. Lyra? Allora? He can’t remember quite what she said her name was. 

“Physically, you’re fine,” the funny-looking man interrupts, pulling at the end of his mustache. “Your brain is all healed up, and you should be right as rain!”

“But unfortunately, we couldn’t repair all of the damage in time,” the woman says, putting a hand on his leg. “I understand that you… have some memory loss?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, reaching up to rub a hand over his hair, and gosh there’s a lot of it. “I… yeah.” He wants to trust them, feels like he should, even; but there’s some piece of him that whispers  _ trust no one, you are better off alone, don’t make yourself vulnerable _ . The scope of the loss is obvious to him: he remembers nothing. He only knows his name is Keith because that’s what everyone keeps calling him, beyond that… it’s a blank.

“Well,” she says, clearly forcing a smile, “it’s entirely possible that you’ll make a full recovery. Human brains are resilient, or so I’m told. In the meantime, you’re free to wander around the ship. Here’s a schematic, in case you need it.” She hands him a small flat screen, his location picked out as a tiny red dot.

“And just ask if you need anything!” The man chirps, helping him stand with a solicitous hand to his elbow as he steps off the examining table. He still feels shaky, like the contents of his skull are too loose, his limbs too long and awkward. “Ah! Here’s Shiro now. He’ll take you back to your room.”

“Hey, Keith,” says the big man who enters, smiling softly. Keith recognizes him, can’t imagine how he wouldn’t. This face was the first thing he saw when he woke up, watched it break into a grin so sunshiney he can’t imagine how an actual star could compete. Then he’d watched it crumple into concern and poorly-hidden grief with Keith’s own first words: “Who are you? Where am I?”

There’s no hint of that loss now in the man’s open and friendly regard. _ Good at compartmentalizing, _ Keith thinks, and stows that information away for later. He has no idea what he’ll need to know about these people, so he tries to glean every crumb of information, just in case. The beautiful woman is clearly an authority; her voice rings with it, and the two men are deferential to her, though Shiro less so than the funny man. The funny man is, well, funny, but also clearly very clever, and used to being able to babble at will, which means that he also occupies a position of privilege. In what, Keith can’t say. 

Shiro… is looking at him expectantly, so Keith steps cautiously to his side as the other two exit the room in a flurry of  _ farewells  _ and  _ see you at dinners _ . It’s a relief when he can’t hear them, and Shiro’s mouth tips up at the corner in obvious amusement at Keith’s quiet exhale. 

“They can be a bit much,” Shiro says diplomatically, and Keith nods ruefully. 

“I can tell already.”

Shiro just chuckles and offers his arm. “How you feeling? Want me to walk you back to your room? You could lie down and take a nap, if you want.”

Keith settles a hand on the inside of Shiro’s elbow, and it feels… strange. He has some sort of vague sense memory of being shorter, having to reach higher to do this. “How long have I known you?” he asks.

“Since you were fifteen,” Shiro says, and there’s that hint of melancholy flickering in his eyes. “We met when you were fifteen and I was twenty-one.”

Keith nods. That would account for strangeness of the angle; he assumes he’s grown since then. Although… “how old are we now?”

“You’re twenty-five, and I’m twenty-nine.”

“That… doesn’t…” he frowns.

“It’s a long story,” Shiro says, and smiles. “I’ll tell you sometime, if you like.”

“Yeah,” Keith exhales. “I think I would. But I don’t want to go back to my quarters.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t… know.” It’s a little daunting to realize he has no idea what his options even are outside of this room and wherever he sleeps. There must be rooms for everyone else, but it seems a little awkward to ask to go to any of those, and he also doesn’t really want to go sit somewhere. He feels like he needs to move.

“Why don’t I take you on a tour,” Shiro suggests, and Keith has to wonder if it’s a coincidence, or if he’s really that predictable. Or maybe Shiro just knows him that well?  _ Inconclusive _ , he thinks, and files it away.

“Yeah,” he says, “that’d be great.”

\--

The Atlas is huge, much bigger than the little map he’d been given would suggest. 

“The woman,” Keith says, as they’re walking down yet another gleaming white hallway, “is this ship hers?”

“Allura,” Shiro says, and Keith repeats the name to himself under his breath. “No, our old ship used to be hers, the Castle of Lions. But it got destroyed a few years ago.”

“That’s why she seems like she’s in charge,” Keith mutters, and Shiro laughs.

“No, she seems like she’s in charge because she  _ is  _ in charge. She’s the princess: the ruler of all Altean people. Being in charge of the Castle of Lions was secondary.”

“Oh,” Keith says, reframing his mental concept of “princess” to include a fierce alien woman in a flight suit. “Then whose ship is this?”

“Mine,” Shiro says after a second of hesitation, and when Keith turns to look at him, there’s a faint blush staining his cheekbones and pinking his ears. It’s… riveting, and Keith has to pull his gaze away.

“This whole thing is yours?” He can’t help the awe that colors his voice as they come to a stop in front of a window. They must be at the top of the ship looking backward, because he can see the shape of it stretching behind them, sleek and deadly against the starry sky. “Wait a minute,” he says, frowning, “if you’re in charge of the ship, what are you doing wasting your time giving me tours? Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, flying it or something?”

Shiro reaches out and puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder, and there’s that flash of sense recognition again, leaving him slightly disoriented. “No ship is more important to me than you, Keith,” he says earnestly, and damned if Keith doesn’t believe the honest sincerity in those grey eyes. He doesn’t know what to say to that, and Shiro must sense it, because he pulls back and smiles disarmingly again, shrugging a shoulder. “Besides, I’m just the captain. And we’re just floating here right now, waiting for more info from some of our allies. They don’t need me for anything.”

“ _ Just the captain _ ,” Keith repeats incredulously, and Shiro laughs, turning back to the starfield in front of them. Keith lets the silence stretch for a moment, then swallows down unexpected nerves. “So we were close, then,” he says, and it’s a statement, not a question.

“We  _ are  _ close,” Shiro says, gaze directed fixedly out the window. “You not remembering it doesn’t invalidate nearly a decade of… us.”  _ There’s not a word for it, what we are to each other _ , Keith notes,  _ or not one Shiro’s comfortable using _ , and won’t that be something to dig into later. “Whether you get your memories back or not, it doesn’t matter. I’m always going to be here for you.”

Keith watches him for a long moment, studying the careful mask of calm that Shiro has nearly seamlessly molded in place. This hurts Shiro, he realizes, that Keith doesn’t know him at all, and Keith feels sad and angry about it in equal measure. What did he have with this man that his was the face he woke up to? Was it something he felt as strongly about as Shiro does? There’s a small defensive piece of him that wants to strike out, to tell Shiro to give it up, because Keith feels nothing for him, and maybe never will, but he pushes it ruthlessly down. As much as he doesn’t know or trust his situation, he trusts this man, and whatever they’ve been or will be, he doesn’t want to hurt him if he can avoid it.

“Thank you,” Keith says finally, and Shiro nods, once, in acknowledgement, then turns back and smiles.

“Want to see the training deck?”

\--

There’s no way in which showing up for dinner is ever going to be anything less than overwhelming, so Keith grits his teeth and follows Shiro into the small dining room.  _ Like ripping off a bandaid _ , he thinks, and braces himself.

He’s immediately tackled by the smallest person in the room, and thankfully his instincts are good enough, or remember enough, that he catches her as she flings her arms around his neck and shrieks in his ear. This must be Pidge, he decides, because he’d made Shiro brief him on the team. Also known as Katie, and the Green Paladin, the pilot of the green lion, the tiniest and smartest of them all. 

“We thought you were going to die!” she yells into his hair as he looks helplessly over her shoulder at Shiro, who is doing a bad job of hiding his chuckles in his hand. 

“...but I didn’t?” he says, and Pidge punches him hard in the shoulder before jumping lightly down. 

“And you better  _ not _ ,” she adds, yielding her space to the large guy who must be Hunk. 

“Yeah, man,” Hunk says, enveloping Keith in a hug that smells like spices and squeezing till Keith feels something in his back pop. “We need you!”

“Thanks,” he says when Hunk lets him go, and for the first time he feels genuine regret that he doesn’t remember these people. Allura and Coran he recognizes from earlier, which means that the man who offers him a cautious fist bump from across the table must be Lance. “It’s good to be back.”

Dinner turns out to be less awkward than he feared. Shiro and Pidge sit on his either side and keep the conversations directed mostly away from him. He makes an effort to listen to everything going on and to compliment Hunk’s cooking at length, which makes Hunk beam, but overall, he eats quietly, trying to absorb every piece of information he can. He thinks he must have been habitually quiet anyway, because no one really gives him grief about it.

The bond between them all is clear, and from what Shiro had told him, runs deep. It’s fascinating to watch the interplay between everyone, the result of several years of living continually in each other’s pockets while striving toward a desperate goal. He feels like a visitor at a zoo, or a stranger dropped into a family dinner, a step behind and missing half the punchlines. 

He can’t identify the feeling he’s left with when it wraps up, and Shiro escorts him back to his room. It’s strange to long for something that’s in theory already his, but it’s the best descriptor that he can find. There’s an ease among the paladins and Alteans, a comfort in their own skin and a trust in their own history. He has to assume he had that too, but he doesn’t now, and his quarters are dark and belong to a stranger.

“Come in?” he says to Shiro before he thinks to stop himself, “that is, if you’re not busy. Actually, no, never mind, I shouldn’t keep you.”

“Keith,” Shiro says, and smiles easily, “it’s fine.”

“Okay,” he says, blowing out a breath and turning to enter the room. “Thanks.”

The door opens, revealing a small living space, sparsely decorated. There are some clothes thrown over a chair in the corner and a knife that seems like it should be significant lying on a side table. The bed is made with military precision, and there is… nothing else of interest in the room.

“So I’m a minimalist,” he says flatly, and Shiro snorts behind him.

“That might be overselling it,” Shiro says, and waits for Keith to sit down on the bed before he takes the chair, shoving the clothes over with a gesture born of long familiarity. “I don’t think it’s an aesthetic choice; you’ve just never had a lot of stuff.”

“Huh,” Keith says, and pulls off his boots. He’d been hoping for a few more clues about himself, but apparently past him is not helpful in that way.  _ Note to self _ , he thinks,  _ begin keeping a journa _ l. “What am I like?” he asks after a minute, because it’s clear that Shiro is waiting him out.

“Brilliant,” Shiro says without hesitation, “loyal to a fault. You’re the best pilot I’ve ever met. Stubborn, and determined. Prickly, when you’re tired or feel like someone is bullshitting you.”

“Charming,” Keith mutters, lining his boots up at the foot of the bed because it seems like the right thing to do.

“You’re considerate, and thoughtful, and a great leader. You’re tight with your mom.”

“My mom?” Keith asks in surprise. Somehow it had never occurred to him to ask about family, and that suddenly seems like an oversight. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro answers. “I don’t think you do, either. She’s out on a mission. She’s a Galra spy and assassin, and last I knew she was going undercover for a while. You made her take your dog with her for protection.” His lip twitches.

“My… mother is an alien rebel and I… have a dog?”

Shiro’s eyes are twinkling, and Keith can’t tell if it’s because he’s pulling Keith’s leg or because he’s been waiting all day just to hit him with the most ridiculous bits of Keith’s life story.

“Well, a cosmic wolf. He teleports.”

“Of course he does,” Keith says, and Shiro starts to laugh. “So, I’m half… Galra? But you said we met when I was a teenager. How did that work?”

“You only found out about your heritage,” and that’s a polite word for it, Keith thinks, given that he’s pretty sure the Galra are the Big Bads, “a few years ago. You were raised on Earth, thinking you were human. We met at the Galaxy Garrison, where we were training to be pilots.”

“So we were gonna go to space?” That sounds cool, Keith thinks, and then has to laugh at the thought. “I guess we succeeded.”

“Well, yes,” Shiro makes a face like he doesn’t quite know how to respond to that, which means there’s more to that story than he’s offering up. Keith is learning to read between the lines with Shiro, but he decides not to push it for now. “I guess we did.”

“Do I have other family? How did I even not know my mom was Galra- aren’t they purple or something?”

“Yeah,” Shiro leans forward, his face going all sympathetic, which, shit. This ought to be good. “Your mom left when you were really little to go back to working for the Galra resistance, and she left you with your dad on Earth, so you didn’t know her until you met a few years ago.” He pauses, watching Keith’s face carefully. “Your dad died when you were eight, and I know you spent time in the foster system, in several different homes. I don’t think you were really close to anyone after his death.”

“Until I met you.”

“Um, yeah.” Shiro pulls a hand through his white hair and makes a bashful face. “Until you met me.”

“So I get into the Galaxy Garrison when I’m fifteen. You’re already there?”

“Yeah, I was a pilot. I was actually the one who recruited you for the Garrison. They used to have me go to schools and test the kids to see who might be good, and get them to apply.”

Oh. That’s interesting, Keith thinks, and feels a small warmth in his chest at the thought. He doesn’t remember being lonely, but he must’ve been, and he can only imagine what catching the attention of a young, hotshot Shiro would have felt like to a lonely teenager.

“So I was good?”

“You were  _ amazing _ ,” Shiro says, with feeling, and Keith ducks his head. “You were almost better than me from day one, and it took me years to get to that level.”

“You were the best,” Keith says, because of course Shiro would have been. No wonder they sent him out to all the schools. Handsome, charming, the best at what he does. 

“ _ We _ were the best,” Shiro says, leaning over to tap Keith on the knee. “I never did get to see your scores from after I left, but I had money riding on how long it would take you to finish obliterating every record I set in my time there.”

Keith frowns. “You left?” That must’ve sucked. It doesn’t sound like he had much of a social circle beyond Shiro. Or maybe Shiro just didn’t know about it if he did? 

“That is a story for a different time,” Shiro says with finality, and there’s that wall that Keith was wondering when he was going to hit. Shiro may be kindness and empathy incarnate in the body of a minor deity, but it’s becoming more and more clear that he has his own secrets, and whether or not he trusted previous!Keith with them, it’s going to take a little longer before he trusts current!Keith with them. “You should get some rest.”

“Hey,” Keith says, and forces himself to look up and meet Shiro’s eyes, because wall or not, Shiro’s been nothing but unspeakably generous with his time today. “Thanks. For everything. It… means a lot.”

“Of course,” Shiro says, and smiles at him, but the hint of grief lingers in the corners of his eyes. “Sleep well!”

“You too,” Keith manages, just as the door closes behind him. “You too.”

\--

He falls into a routine. Meals with just the team, training practice with the team or with Shiro. After a week they deem him fit to take his lion out again, and whatever bond it required with him must still be there, because it accepts him without a fuss, even if it seems a little confused by his mental blankness.

It becomes the new normal. And it’s… fine. It’s fine until he’s alone in his quarters at night, the room that belonged to Keith from before, the space that still feels like some sort of temporary accommodations. He goes to sleep every night wondering if he’ll wake up the next morning magically remembering everything, anything.

He doesn’t.

\--

“So,” Pidge says with her usual disregard for conventional conversation openers, “you remembered anything yet?”

They’re alone in the lab several weeks after his awakening, Pidge at work fixing a piece of his suit that he’d jacked up in their last run. It’s not serious, but it requires tools and finesse he doesn’t have, ergo why he’s in her lair when he’d rather be in bed.

“No,” he says, trying not to let his frustration show, “nothing.”

She turns to eyeball him briefly, her gaze laserlike and impartial. He has her whole attention, and it makes him uncomfortable. 

“Do you get anything at all? Not concrete memories, necessarily, but like… flashes? Or dreams?”

“Not really,” he shrugs. “I guess I get like… sense memories sometimes? But not too much.”

“Sense memories?” she asks, turning her attention back to the piece in front of her. “Like what? Hand me that pick.”

“Like,” he identifies the random pointy metal piece she’s reaching for and passes it over. “Like my body remembers how to spar. I don’t actually know in my brain what sort of fighting I can do, but my body does.” 

“Oh, yeah, ok,” she says, popping a magnifying lens up to her eye and prodding at something tiny in his intake manifold. “That makes sense. Ingrained physical habits, those memories are stored differently.”

“Figures,” he says, “it kinda sucks, though. I don’t know what I can do, and the only way to find out if I can do something is to try it. But then if I can’t…”

“So  _ that’s  _ how you got that sprained finger last week,” she cackles. “Found a limit?”

“Ugh,” he says with feeling. “Yes. Lance helped me find it.”

“I’m sure he did,” Pidge snorts. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, I guess? When I first woke up, it felt like I was too tall next to Shiro.”

“Ah,” Pidge says. “Well, you’ve known him for a long time, and I think you did the biggest part of your recent growing when he was Kuron and you were in the quantum void, so it would make sense that your body might not remember how things were, but would default back to remembering what they were like for the majority of your interactions.”

There’s a lot in that sentence that he doesn’t know how to parse, so he lets it go. 

“I wasn’t around you guys. I didn’t join the Garrison until after Matt and Dad and Shiro went to Pluto,” she continues, “so I never really saw you and Shiro together back then, but Matt said you two were best friends. I think he’d have been jealous if Shiro hadn’t always been such a good friend to him, too. So it makes sense that your body would remember him, just like it remembers your fighting styles.”

It’s unfair, Keith thinks, that everyone else on this damn ship knows more about his business than he does, and that they dole it out in nonchalant asides as though these are minor things that everyone just takes for granted. He forces the annoyance down; it’s not Pidge’s fault his brain is a damaged mess.

“Do you still think I’ll get my memory back?” he asks, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. 

“I don’t know, Keith,” she says with a sigh, handing the fixed flight suit piece back to him. “It gets less likely the longer it takes. But who can say? I wouldn’t give up on it yet.”

“Thanks,” he says, and takes the piece. “I’m gonna go reattach this before I forget. Don’t stay up too late.”

“Bah,” she says waving a hand toward the door. “You old people have no stamina.”

\--

“Again,” Shiro says, and Keith flicks the piece of hair out of his eyes and charges. He nearly gets it this time, but misses the final step of the sequence, and ends up flat on his back under Shiro’s hefty palm, just like he has the past three times they’ve tried this move. 

Keith just lays there, breathing hard, but Shiro beams at him. 

“That’s much better! You’ve nearly got it!”

“Oof,” Keith says succinctly, and forces himself to roll over onto his stomach. That seems like enough effort, so he lies there, gathering his energy. “I still can’t do it, though.”

“You’re much closer than you were before,” Shiro answers, grabbing a towel from the edge of the room and wiping his face. “You used to overthink this one, I never did understand why. You’re not doing that anymore.”

“Unexpected benefits to having your mind wiped, I guess,” Keith says, hauling himself upright. “I’m a blank slate.”

He realizes too late what he’s said and turns, but Shiro hasn’t managed to put his feelings away yet, and his face is devastating.

“Nothing at all?” He says softly, and fuck, Keith had definitely implied to Shiro that he didn’t remember much, but he’d never come out and said it quite that plainly before. 

“Not...nothing,” Keith says, wanting to backpedal, but not wanting to lie. He hates himself for the way Shiro’s eyes light up with hope. “Just… not much.”

“Can I…” Shiro starts, then shakes his head. “No, never mind. It’s not my business.”

_ It should be _ , Keith thinks, and  _ I think it would have been _ . 

“My body remembers a few things. I…” he takes a deep breath. “When I woke up, and you stood next to me, it seemed like I was too tall. Like the way we… fit together was off.”

There’s a slow-blooming smile on Shiro’s face, and Keith has to look away. It’s too much, that kind of joy on a face like Shiro's. It's blinding, disconcerting.

“You think you remember it from when we were younger?”

“I guess,” Keith says, and shrugs as nonchalantly as he can manage, forcing himself back into his stance. “Hey, can we try that run again? I really want to get it down.”

“Sure, Keith,” Shiro says fondly, positioning himself opposite and letting his features fall back behind the mask he wears so easily. “Let’s do it.”

\--

“You’re up early,” Hunk says as Keith stumbles into the kitchen. “Scone?”

“Thanks,” Keith says, taking the offered pastry. “Um. Is it. Supposed to be that color?”

“Eh,” Hunk shrugs, “happy accident.”

“Okay.” It tastes fine if he closes his eyes, Keith decides. Food, in his opinion, shouldn’t be glowing magenta, but he feels like he’s probably had to let go of a lot of those sorts of Earth-centric biases over the past few years. “‘s good, Hunk. Thanks.”

“No problem.” Hunk busies himself rolling new dough balls, these of a more tropical orange hue, and placing them on a baking tray before pouring a cup of coffee and setting it in front of Keith. “How’ve you been doing, buddy?”

Keith makes a frustrated sound around a mouthful of scone, and takes a drink from his mug instead of bothering to find words. 

“Yeah,” Hunk says, “I figured it must be pretty hard. I know Shiro took a while to adjust, but he had the opposite problem, I guess- too many memories instead of not enough.”

“I just,” it’s the fatigue that lets him be honest, he tells himself, and sets his mug down on the counter, carefully studying the slight chip on the rim. “I can’t be him. Keith from before. I don’t know him. But I feel like I keep walking around with everyone expecting me to be him, or remember him, or know how to act like him… and I’m just  _ not _ .”

“I mean… you really are, though, you know that, right?” Hunk spreads his hands placatingly when Keith glares at him. “What I mean is, you seem basically the same to me. Like, yeah, you don’t have the same stories to tell, and you miss some of the inside jokes, and I get that that sucks, man, I do. But your personality? You’re still the same old Keith.” 

Hunk pushes another scone across the table, settling it next to Keith’s coffee mug, and Keith takes the offering for what it is. “What I’m saying is, don’t get caught up in thinking you have to live up to a memory everyone else has or something like that. You’re still the same guy. You’re still the Black Paladin. You’re still the badass loner with a heart of gold that everyone loves.”

“...badass loner with a heart of gold? Am I a casting call from a TV movie?”

Hunk grins. “I mean, kinda. Have you found your old jacket yet? Cause that thing was sinful on you even before the growth spurt, and it did not get any better after you got expelled and went and lived in the desert.”

Keith throws a piece of scone at him, but Hunk just catches it in his mouth, and grins even wider. 

“I guess I’m just… worried about not living up to expectations. Or to how people remember me. I’m flying blind, here.”

“Hey,” Hunk leans on the counter across from him, and waits until Keith looks up to meet his eyes. “I know this is incredibly cliched advice, but in this case, it’s really true- just be yourself. You literally can’t go wrong.”

Keith huffs out a laugh, and downs the rest of his coffee. “Yeah, I guess so.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and stands to put his cup in the cleanser. “Thanks, Hunk.”

“Anytime, man.” Hunk says, turning back to his dough. “Oh, and Keith?”

“Yeah?” Keith pauses in the doorway, and watches as Hunk grins at him, fond and familiar.

“You were always the best out of anyone at flying blind.”

\--

It’s like a bad dream, and Keith has the presence of mind to wonder how many times he’s done this now, gone falling out of the sky like a marionette with cut strings, like a heavy object dropping to an unforgiving end. 

His harness is fastened and his helmet is on, but Black only manages to slow them a bit before they crash into the ground, and he thinks it’s the G-forces that make him black out and not the actual impact, but it’s anyone’s guess, really. He wakes to the sound of voices and Shiro’s terrified face above him, pale and horrified as he mops blood from Keith’s lip. 

“Keith,” he says, “ _ Keith _ ,” and Keith leans over and retches on his boots, sending a mental apology to Black for soiling her interior. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I think,” Keith says, “sorry about that. Just going to be bruised for a while.” He stands up cautiously, and is immediately pulled into an embrace that makes him very glad he doesn’t have any cracked ribs. The world sways alarmingly around him, and he pushes on Shiro’s shoulders hard enough to get himself on his own feet again.

“Shiro,” he says gently, “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

Shiro nods slowly, his eyes still wild as he gives Keith a long once-over. 

“Okay,” he breathes, the hand he lays on Keith’s shoulder shaking, “okay. You’re fine.”

\--

“Lance,” he says a few days later in the lounge as Lance busies himself with one of Pidge’s video games, “You and Allura. You’re a… a thing, right?”

“Yeah,” Lance says, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. “One deca-phoeb, three phoebs, and fourteen quintants.”

“How does that...work?”

“Uh,” Lance’s thumbs still on the controller, and he gets an awkward look on his face. “Well, you see, Keith, when two people love each other very much…”

“NO, god, Lance, not what I meant.” Keith elbows him for good measure, and they lose the next two minutes to a shoving match before Keith pins him, rubbing his knuckles against Lance’s head until he cries uncle.

“What I meant was,” Keith folds his arms and looks away as Lance picks up the controller again, “you’re both paladins. We’re in danger, all the time. And she outranks you, by like, a lot. How do you…” he makes a despairing hand gesture, “how do you navigate all that?”

“Ohhh,” Lance says, cracking a grin, “finally admitting we have the hots for Shiro, are we?”

“No, dude, I just…” Keigh shoves a hand through his hair in frustration. It’s been months now, but he’s still not used to how it sticks up all over his head. He’d mentioned buzzing it once, but the look on Shiro’s face had stopped him in his tracks, and so he’s stuck with a rampage of black nonsense on top of his face.

“It’s cool,” Lance says loftily. “I’d say your secret is safe with me, but it’s not much of a secret, is it?”

“ _ Lance _ !”

“Okay, okay, fine.” Lance turns back to the game, making the little blue ship twist in a complicated loop. “Her outranking me is never a problem. We respect each other. I know she’s in charge when we’re doing politics or diplomacy or any time she’s acting as the Princess of the Alteans, and she knows she can trust me to behave like it.” A small explosion fills the air in front of them, and Lance leans forward in concentration. “As paladins, we have each others’ backs. Just like we do for everyone else. It’s simple.”

“But what if something happens?” Keith can’t help but ask, worrying a hangnail in his teeth as he watches the tiny jet narrowly dodge attackers. 

Lance shrugs. “Something probably will happen. And that will suck. But we both know that, and we both consent to that whenever we go out. Saving the universe is the most important thing to both of us, and then, after that, there’s us.”

Keith sighs, stretching his toes under the table. He needs new socks, but he’s not sure where to get them on this ship, and hasn’t mustered up the energy to ask anyone yet. 

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just… not? Especially if something’s going to inevitably happen to one of you?”

Lance pauses the game, and turns to frown at him. 

“No. Even if it ends up making me sad, or her sad, or whatever, it’s worth it. I’d rather have whatever time I get with her than to not have had her at all.”

“Are you sure?” Keith asks quietly.

“Yes,” Lance says firmly. “And you are, too. Stop wibbling and just tell Shiro how you feel already.”

“ _ Ugh _ ,” Keith says, and stands up, shoving at Lance’s shoulder as he goes. “I hope you lose your game.”

“I’m gonna rename the losing general after yoooou!” Lance crows as Keith exits the lounge, and Keith can’t help but smile as he flips him the bird.

\--

He’s not sure why it’s taken him this long to think of it. Maybe he did think of it, but he was too scared to acknowledge it with his conscious mind. Either way, it’s been six months, and he is sick to death of this suggestions and shadows bullshit. He has to know.

“Hey, Black?”

There’s a rumble of subsonic inquisitiveness at the back of his mind, and he shifts his weight in the pilot seat. 

“You… remember things you see. Between the paladins. What happens, what goes on.”

He gets a distinct impression of slightly confused assent. Of course she sees things. Of course she remembers things.

“Cool.” He takes a deep breath, and tries to settle himself comfortably. “Can you show me?”

There’s another rumble, more felt than heard, and as he closes his eyes and slows his breathing, he feels her guide him in. It starts slowly, images of them all when they first found Black, new to the teamwork and still wet behind the ears. Pidge is even tinier, and Shiro’s hair is still mostly dark. Keith looks smaller, less sure of himself, Lance is ridiculous, and poor Hunk’s anxiety is palpable. The scenes shift, moving through battles and explorations, tight spots and celebrations. They grow, they change, they gain experience through success and loss. 

He sees Shiro disappear, sees the depth of his own grief. It’s shocking in its rawness, Shiro lost to him for a second time, and he’s sure he must’ve thought he was doing a better job of hiding it than he was, but he looks like he’s bleeding out. And then Shiro comes back, but it’s not the same. He hadn’t noticed before, but in the first memories they’d been attached at the hip, and now, there’s a space. He feels the disapproval from Black, the regret, the knowledge that she could have done things differently, and didn’t, that there’s no help for it now.

He sees himself leave, sees Shiro let him go. It hurts even to watch as a movie, divorced entirely from his own memories of the same events, hurts because he can see how much it wounds him to do it at the time. He’s gone for a long time, and then he’s back, and the look on Shiro’s face when he returns is everything,  _ everything…  _ except, of course, it’s not Shiro, not really. Does it matter, he wonders, and the black lion gives the equivalent of a shrug. The creature thought it was Shiro, until the end, at least; it had Shiro’s memories, his thoughts and feelings, even as Black held Shiro’s soul.

He sees them fight; sees Shiro-who-is-not-Shiro chase him, shooting at him. Sees himself dodging and running and desperately, desperately trying not to hurt the man he clearly values above all else. He watches helplessly as the man wearing Shiro’s face presses the sword down, and watches as his own mouth forms the words that nearly break the spell.  _ I love you _ , he says in the vision, and Keith hears the echoing thought from within the lion.  _ I’ll never give up on you _ .

He sees them fall, sees Shiro lifeless and white-haired, sees Allura guide his essence back into the body that had been used to trick them all. Sees Shiro wake in his arms, cradled and beloved. The images speed up now, flying through visuals of Earth, of battles, of the glorious moment when Shiro changes the Atlas from a ship to a being, of a uniformed Shiro settled by Keith’s own hospital bed, of him whispering into Keith’s ear.

The images fade, and Keith comes back to himself, tears pouring down his face. It’s so much, and it guts him, rips into his heart and breaks it wide open. He’s lost so much. So much. 

And what’s more, he realizes with a mounting fury, he’s had it kept from him.

\--

“How  _ dare  _ you,” he says, gritting it out between clenched teeth because he never has seen the point of beating around the bush. “How  _ could  _ you, Shiro. I trusted you.”

“Whoa,” Shiro says, holding up a hand and squinting at Keith in surprise from where he sits on his bunk. “What’d I do?”

He’s still beautiful, even doing something as mundane as polishing his boots, and Keith wants to hate him for it. 

“What did you  _ do _ ,” Keith asks, able to hear that his voice has gone straight past angry and into mean and unable to care, “what did you do,  _ Takashi _ ?”

It’s meant to hurt, and it clearly does, Shiro’s face equal parts shocked and wounded as he sets down the boot he’d been working on.

“Ah,” Shiro says, and full marks for cleverness, Keith thinks, because he seems to have gotten it in one.

“We were together. Weren’t we?” Keith asks, “For a long time, too.” He keeps himself close to the door, arms crossed and well out of reach. If Shiro touches him, he’ll fall, he can feel it, but he has to get this out before it festers, before it poisons their every interaction. If it hasn’t already.

Shiro breathes out hard, staring at his hands. “Yes. It hadn’t been official for that long, but. Yes.”

“Why would you keep that from me?” Keith can hear his voice crack, but there’s nothing he can do about it. “Why would you  _ lie  _ to me?”

“I didn’t…”

“You  _ did _ ,” Keith’s voice is like a lash, “a lie of omission is the same. You said we were  _ close _ , but you never said we were in  _ love _ .”

“Are in love, Keith”, and there they are, Keith thinks bitterly, tears glistening in Shiro’s perfect eyes. “ _ Am _ in love. I  _ never  _ stopped loving you.”

“Then why would you keep this from me?”

“Because you didn’t know me from Coran,” Shiro says, and clenches his fists. “When you looked at me, and asked me who I was, my whole world died, Keith. But I couldn’t… I couldn’t just assume. I couldn’t just tell you who you were to me; what would you do with that? Start play-acting the role of boyfriend? How could I trust that the feelings you would show me would be real, and not the result of knowing you were supposed to have them?” He’s clutching at the sheets now, his eyes pleading, but it only serves to make Keith angrier.

“Do you even  _ hear  _ yourself right now?” Keith snarls, “How could you trust that I would love you? Jesus Christ, Takashi, how did you ever trust that I loved you in the first place? Did my faith, my loyalty, my  _ love  _ mean so little to you that you would think this would end it?”

“Keith, no,” Shiro whispers, his eyes wide, “no, I never doubted you, I just didn’t want to coerce you. I didn’t want you to think you didn’t have a choice. If you loved me, I wanted you to come to it on your own terms. I waited for you. I will  _ keep  _ waiting for you. And if you don’t…” his voice chokes, but he takes a breath and continues, “but if you don’t come to love me, then we’ll be friends. And that will be okay.”

Keith feels like he’s been punched. “That would be okay? You’d just… give up on me? On us? Just like that?”

“No, not give up, just…”

“I’m the same person, you know. I didn’t  _ leave _ ,” Keith says, and he can hear the edge of finality in it. “I didn’t stop loving you. I just didn’t have the words for what it was. And you…” he shudders, tears running freely now, “you couldn’t even tell me the truth. You left me alone, when you could have been by my side from the beginning. Do you know how  _ lonely  _ I’ve been? How much I’ve  _ missed  _ you? Fuck, Takashi… I’ve been missing a piece of myself for the last six months, and you could have saved me at any moment.” 

“We save each other,” Shiro whispers, but Keith just shakes his head and turns to the door, fumbling blindly for the latch.

“You saved yourself, Shiro. Not me.”

\--

The sun is setting over the planet they’ve been visiting for the last week. Keith’s been avoiding… well, basically everyone, and fortunately there’s been plenty of diplomacy and new science and fancy dinners to keep nearly everyone busy and out of his hair. 

Until now, apparently.

“I’m still mad at you,” he says, without bothering to turn around. 

Shiro settles down beside him, and Keith forces himself not to flinch away.

“I know,” Shiro answers, and Keith turns to look at him in surprise. He sounds wrecked, and looks worse. “But I can’t do this, Keith. I can’t live like this.”

It’s small, and petty, but Keith can’t help it. “Because of the team?” he asks.

“ _ No _ ,” Shiro says, turning fiercely to face him. “Because of you. Because I love you, and I can’t live with you mad at me. Not like this.”

“So what,” Keith goads, “are you going to say we have to at least be friends? Go back to the status quo?”

“ _ Fuck _ the status quo,” Shiro says, and Keith twitches back in surprise. “I was wrong. I was trying to do the right thing, and it blew up in my face. And I’m sorry, Keith,  _ god  _ am I sorry. I thought I was… I thought…” His voice chokes, and something inside Keith splits free. He’s lost this before, more times than he can actually remember, and he doesn’t, he realizes suddenly, want to lose it again.

“Hey,” he says, and puts his arms out, reaching. Shiro grabs at him, pulling him in tight and burying his face in Keith’s neck. “I know you were,” he soothes, rubbing his cheek on Shiro’s head, “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I was so angry.”

“You were right,” Shiro whispers, “I left you. Again.”

“No more. Not ever.” Keith says, his voice trembling as he clutches at the man in his arms. 

“Never,” Shiro says fervently, “Never again.”

Silence lingers, and Keith feels Shiro begin to relax in his hold, his fingers mindlessly running up and down Keith’s side, his nose cold against Keith’s neck. 

“Shiro,” he starts, and feels Shiro tense against him. “You realize I’ll probably never get my memories back. Is that… will you…”

Shiro shifts against him, sitting up so he can look into Keith’s eyes. His face is serious and scarred, beautiful and beloved.

“I can’t say that it doesn’t make me sad.” He reaches out a hand and traces the edge of Keith’s face. “We’ve already lost so much. But I remember them,” he smiles, and leans in to bring their foreheads together, pressing in until Keith’s eyes close and his whole world narrows to the sound, the touch, the smell of Shiro pressed against him. 

“I remember us,” Shiro says again, “and I promise, I’ll tell you everything.”

 


End file.
